Toshiko Hirata (1955–) is a prominent Japanese poet and novelist. During the 1980s, she, along with Itō Hiromi, emerged as one of the foremost voices of the so-called women’s boom of poetry. Her poetry is known for its directness and black humor. In the last decade, she has increasingly turned to writing novels, which often feature ordinary people in bizarre circumstances that lead them to question the traditional family system and the spots allotted to them in society.

Jeffrey Angles (1971– ) is a professor of Japanese and translation at Western Michigan University. He is the author of Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishōnen Culture in Japanese Modernist Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and editor of These Things Here and Now: Poetic Responses to the March 11, 2011 Disasters (Josai University Press, 2016). He is also the award-winning translator of Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako (University of California Press, 2010), Hiromi Itō’s Wild Grass on the Riverbank (Action Books, 2014), Orikuchi Shinobu’s The Book of the Dead (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), and numerous other works of prose and poetry. Watashi no hizuke henkōsen (My Own International Date Line), his first book of poetry written in Japanese, was published in 2016. Author photo: Martin Figura.

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Words without Borders opens doors to international exchange through translation, publication, and promotion of the best international literature. Every month we publish select prose and poetry on our site. In addition we develop print anthologies, work with educators to bring literature in translation into classrooms, host events with foreign authors, and maintain an extensive archive of global writing.